


my heart never sleeps

by trustmeimthe



Category: Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman, Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-15 22:11:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5802088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trustmeimthe/pseuds/trustmeimthe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in a world where the winchesters were never brought up hunters, but the yellow-eyed demon didn't change word one of his plans, dean stumbles upon the london underworld and chooses to protect his brother by making a deal with the devil. (metaphorically this time.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	my heart never sleeps

**Author's Note:**

> this is a snippet of a larger au in which dean chooses to trade his heart and his freedom for sam's safety, enlisting as door's hero and guard in her quest to unite the underside. it is set pre-s1 of supernatural, but post-canon as far as neverwhere goes. this was a commission for [surfaceshine](http://surfaceshine.tumblr.com/), who is also half responsible for this au.

Dean Winchester's amulet is a strange and spiky thing - one of the precious little artifacts of the old world that the marquis de Carabas, with his occasionally magpie-esque tendencies, would delight to squirrel away in his pocket and never let go of ever again, at least until he sells it. In no way is he a sentimental creature (quite the opposite, in fact, purged of all sentimentality until he is pure of qualities that someone who _is_ sentimental might term as "human"), but he does love old things. Things with history, bronzed statuettes that have been blood-soaked more than once in their long lives, things that live stories. Any practitioner of psychometry worth his salt could certainly reach into any one of the marquis's infinite pockets and find a lifetime's worth of stories in the blink of an eye.

Dean's heart is a strange and spiky thing, too. The marquis is pensive, one arm wrist-deep in this unfamiliar man's chest cavity, considering the fact that in all things, some facts remain the same: the inside of one's body is damp and dark and unpleasant, and when the heart is removed, there is an empty space left behind.

When the heart is removed, one should die. This is the theory - some would say science. But woulds and shoulds do not apply here, and they especially take care not to apply to him. He positively wouldn't stand for it.

In a clinical sort of way, he squeezes, his fingers clamping down on the flesh of Dean's broken heart. It beats feebly, like a bird attempting to flap its wings hard enough to break the iron bars of its cage. No use, of course. Once the marquis de Carabas has a hold on something, he doesn't relinquish it easily.

"Sssss."

"You sound like a snake," he says dispassionately, and then mimics it back: "Ssss, ssss. You don't look like a snake, Mister Winchester; you look like a dead dog. And you're drooling on your lip. _Un_ becoming."

He squeezes again, because he likes the idea of pain as punctuation, and that rattling noise comes again, slipping from between Dean's lips like if he doesn't get this out he really _will_ die, even though the marquis knows what he wants to say just as well as he knows how pointless it is. People ask you to do them a favor and then tell them to stop . . .

_A really_ big _favor._ If he doesn't serve the Lady well, this man whose heart he's stealing away, he will be in for a very hard time indeed.

"T," Dean says, squeezing his eyes shut and then forcing them open, his brow sweating as he glares the tiniest, saddest daggers in history at the marquis de Carabas, as though they will do anything.

They do not. He squeezes again, just one more time, in part because restraint is proof of virtue (ha) and in part because he is a little bit very sure that if he continues in this vein Dean really will die, which is not the objective.

Then he pulls the heart out of Dean's chest and holds it in his hand.

Hearts are always smaller than you might expect. Very solid, but small for something given so much symbolic weight and power in the body. Without a heart, you are supposed to die. Dean ought to be dead.

And yet here he is, lying on the filthy ground of this alley, missing his heart, and breathing.

"You son of a bitch," he intones weakly, and presses the amulet into the marquis's hand with as much irritated strength as he can muster. "I fucking hate you."

"Oh no you don't," says the marquis, with the certainty of a man who knows he is telling the truth. "You are very grateful to me, dog. Because I am saving your brother's life."

Dean quiets at that, thunderclouds crossing his face and knitting his brow. He can't argue with it, because he, too, knows that it's the truth.

The funny thing about spells is that they don't have to work the way you might think they ought to. Really, the marquis de Carabas does not like the word _spell_ very much at all. It implies a certain mysticism, which he does not subscribe to. Mysteriousness is fine; mysticism is not his bag.

So this is not a spell, maybe. One might consider it analogous to pushing one's will down a very long, twisty straw - a pink one, the kind that, mythologically speaking, come in tropical drinks containing coconut. The marquis is adept at pushing his will wherever he wants it to go.

Right now, he wants his will to understand the true nature of the heart.

"The true nature of the heart," he soliloquizes, "is the seat of the soul. It is, unfortunately, not the mind, as non-romantics among us might prefer - which is all for the best, because as it turns out, one cannot remove the brain without killing a person. That much is true. The organs that survive best outside the body are the heart and the kidneys."

"Bullshit." Dean coughs, then repeats it. "Bull _shit_."

"Don't interrupt me. I am precisely petty enough to sell this to the highest bidder. As I was saying - that's right, quiet and still, I won't lie and say it'll stop hurting soon so don't you dare look to me for comfort - the true nature of the heart is the seat of the soul. It pumps blood secondarily. First and foremost, it is where we live, truly live - or at least in one of the chambers, although I won't tell you which one, Mister Winchester, no matter how long you live or how well you prove yourself. Nobody knows that but me."

Dean gives him a long and level look. He's still sweating, still drooling, still bloodsoaked, but stern and piercing around the eyes.

"Where'd you hide yours?" he asks.

The marquis de Carabas doesn't respond. But the left corner of his mouth and his eyebrow tick up in unison, like they're connected by an invisible string. In response, Dean grits his teeth. In another universe entirely, it might be considered a smile.

The rest of the ritual passes in silence. The heart does not so much shrink or go invisible as it secedes from this particular section of reality. It's neither dramatic nor ominous; it simply is, which is the truest form of magic. (Hence the other truth, that most of what the marquis does, the everyday things, are parlor tricks, meant to scare and disorient, subtle winks to witch-doctors past, all of whom were him.)

And then it's gone. Just like that, it's gone.

"Poof," says the marquis, and sits back on his heels, tucking the amulet into his pocket.

Dean watches it go. Then, his eyes half-lidded from exhaustion: "You're gonna get it to him?"

"A favor," the marquis says. "Is a favor," he adds. "Is a favor," he concludes.

A long, slow blink from the other man. He looks like he could sleep for a hundred years. Unfortunate, since he certainly won't have the time to. "You got blood on your hand," he murmurs, after an interminable silence.

The marquis looks down. It's true, as a matter of fact. There is a drying glove of blood edging just past his wrist. He witnesses it dispassionately.

"There are worse things," he adds, after another, richer silence.

"Hey." This trips out like an aside. Dean is getting his breath back, and that seems to be startling him. "Don't you ever call me a dog again."

There is no brighter light in the alley, or in the entire world, as the flash of white teeth the marquis displays in this moment.

"Did I say dog? Forgive me. I beseech you. Certainly I meant jackal."

Dean seems to think about this. Then he gives a short, curt nod and leans back against the greasy wall. There is already dirt all over him. He will never be clean again.

"Yeah," he says. "I think I can live with that."

**Author's Note:**

> my commissions information is [here](http://stabigail.tumblr.com/post/131784807902/more-what-ill-write-gorebody)!


End file.
